Not Even in Your Dreams
by Kitanrum
Summary: Kotetsu only ever wanted to be a normal guy. Even after living the life of a normal man and holding a steady job as a Coast Guard officer, there was no way his life could be normal. And now this happens. While on a fishing trip, he finds a man in a coffin, a NEXT too to boot. Not even in his dreams was his life this abnormal. A/N: Rated M for later stuffs.


Not Even In Your Dreams

Chapter 1

By Kitanrum

Kotetsu T. Kaburagi was just an average guy out on an average boat ride with his average friend Antonio Lopez. Or so it would have read if there was such a thing as average in Kotetsu's life. Outside of his averagely perfect dream world, Kotetsu was a Coast Guard officer, having joined after finding that lifeguarding was just a little too boring. He was a NEXT with the ability to amplify his strength one-hundredfold. The skill came in hand when there was a need for crushing to be done in order to stop criminals trying to smuggle God knows what out of Sternbild City; this neat parlor trick earned him the name "Crusher of Justice". His best friend Antonio was also not average. The latino man was himself a NEXT and chose to live his life out as a hardware store owner. He'd tried the life of a lumberjack but found he missed the city too much.

Now here they were, two guys trying to be normal, out on their monthly fishing trip off the Sternbild Coast. "Alright! Time to catch us some yummy fish!" Kotetsu called out as he cut the engine while Antonio dropped the anchor off the side of the boat. "Of course, you're going to do all the cooking. As compensation, I'll do dishes." Kotetsu said, looking over at the large ox of a man setting up his fishing pole beside hm. The boat was large, 30-foot boat with a cabin underneath. They had enough space to set up fold out chairs by the edge and have a mini-cooler between them filled with beers. "Here's for a big catch!" Antonio's deep, gruff voice barked out happily, his beer held up to the sky as if asking whatever force drove his luck to bring him a good catch.

Kotetsu lounged back in his chair after take a good long swig of his beer. "Man, it feels like years since my last day off. I forgot how good it felt just to sit in the sun and relax." The tanned man said, a smile curling up onto his lips. "Am I right?" He asked, looking over at Antonio but the man was not responding. "Tonio?" Kotetsu asked curiously. His best friends gaze was locked somewhere out at sea. Kotetsu's stomach sunk slightly. "God… You see something don't you? Damn it! This is gonna be like last time all over again!" The man grumbled as he sunk into his chair.

"What? No! No, it's not a storm. It's… A box? Look, right over there in the horizon. It's kinda just bobbing around. Not problem right?" Antonio asked, directing Kotetsu's line of sight where his had been. Still the man groaned and stood up reluctantly, his limbs moving as if suddenly held by heavy chains. "Problem. I'm still a Coast Guard officer. I have to report it. There are a lot of companies that lose stock because the shipping companies don't exactly know how to keep their shipments on board. They ask us to retrieve the items sometimes if what they're shipping won't be damaged by the water. We had one of those yesterday. Guess this is the first box to show up." He said, walking to pull the anchor back up.

"So you have to go check it out?" Antonio asked, disappointment prevalent in his tone. Kotetsu frowned and nodded his head. "It was so much more fun when I didn't have to work out on the ocean all the time. It's okay, we'll just pick the box up and keep it onboard. We'll return it when we go back." He assured his friend. No way in hell some stupid company was going to ruin his day off with his best friend! With the anchor pulled up, Kotetsu steered the boat in the direction of the box and radioed in.

He was lucky this was an old Coast Guard boat; he'd boat it at one of those police auctions seven years ago. Turns out that people don't really want to buy a boat that had been used for slave trafficking or a boat where six people were murdered on, but being a bargain hunter, Kotetsu couldn't say no to the $5,000 price. All the money he didn't spend on buying the murdership, a nickname given by Antonio, he used to restore the boat and make it look good as new. He'd renamed it the Tomoe after his wife and it hadn't been anything but great to him.

"This is the Crusher of Justice on the Tomoe, spotted a box off the South Coast from that shipment yesterday. Tell the boys to keep their eyes peeled. I'll take this box and bring it back to HQ, over." Kotetsu said into the receiver. The radio garbled back with a response and he was off.

With the boat close enough to the box bobbing in the water, Kotetsu cut the engine. Antonio was already leaning over the side of the boat to keep the box from going away. Leaning over the side, Kotetsu held on to the other end of the box. "On three." Antonio said with a nod. "One. Two. Three!" Antonio grunted. Both men put in all their might to haul the box over the side before dumping it onto the deck. "Damn! Couldn't have used your hundred power or something?" The Hispanic man asked, glaring a bit at Kotetsu.

His hazel-green glare was met with an exasperated golden-amber stare. "You are such a baby." Kotetsu replied in a deadpan. "Come on, let's open this thing up." He replied once their staring contest ended in a stalemate. Both men walked up to the box which was about the size of a person. "How are we going to open it? We don't have a crowbar." Antonio asked, giving Kotetsu a knowing look.

Kotetsu sighed, rolling his eyes. "Fine, fine! I'll use them." Them being his NEXT powers. The tanned man wasn't really a big fan of using his powers. After that one time when he was a boy and he'd broken almost ever bone on Muramasa's right leg he preferred only to use his powers if necessary.

Clenching his fists together in front of him and taking a deep breath, it was barely a second before his body began to glow blue. Opening his eyes, the golden-amber color was gone replaced with a light blue instead. "Alright, alright, move away." He said pointing at Antonio and then to the side.

With his friend out of the way, Kotetsu gripped the side of the box and then the lid. It was almost child's play for him. He regretted taking the lid of almost immediately. "Oh god! Whew! That is… Whoa, rank!" Holding his nose, the brunette looked away for a moment. "It's like a dead body or something!" He added. "Uh…Kotetsu? I… I think it is." Antonio called from the side. His finger was pointing back at the box. Raising an eyebrow, the bearded man looked back into the box with wide eyes.

Inside of the wooden crate was a metal coffin with chains around it. It looked like the lid had been riveted in place too. There was a hole in the coffin with broken glass around where the face of a dead person would be. "That explains the smell…" Kotetsu said softly. He looked over at his friend and then back at the coffin. "What's… What's that?" He asked, moving around the other side of the box. Antonio was keeping his distance because a) the smell was horrible and b) he didn't want to see a dead person.

Crouching down on the side, Kotetsu tilted his head a bit. The coffin had air tank? "Tonio, check this out. There's an oxygen tank hooked up to this thing… Why would a body need oxygen?" He asked. "Isn't that good for your skin or something? Maybe it's like a mummy they were trying to preserve." The burly man answered back. Kotetsu just gave his friend an odd look before turning back to the box. "I don't think so… By the looks of it the tanks almost empty. It's pretty big though. It makes up the whole side of this box. I don't get it, why would a dead body need an air tank?" He said.

"Well, open it up before you powers run out!" Antonio urged. Rolling his eyes, Kotetsu leaned over the box, breaking the lock that held the chains in place. "Where they afraid this thing was going to break free or something? Jeez, talk about paranoid." He muttered. The lid was a little harder to deal with, but not too much. He was able to pull out a few rivets before pulling the lid off, making his job easier.

The smell was definitely more pungent now, so much so that Antonio was hiding in his shirt and leaning overboard a bit. "Oh god. I think I'm gonna be sick." Kotetsu said, holding his nose. Still, he went back over to the box to see what exactly was inside. To his surprise, it wasn't a decomposing corpse. It looked like a human, an man to be specific in his twenties. He could barely make out his hair color as blonde due to the amount of filth he was covered in. "Tonio… Tonio, I don't think he's dead… Oh my god, I think he's alive!" Kotetsu said, urgency in his voice.

Leaning over the coffin, Kotetsu reached his hand down to check the man's pulse. "Holy crap! He's alive! Barely! But alive!" He exclaimed. Kotetsu went to pick the man out of the metal coffin when his eyes shot open, a brilliant green. Just as he was about to call out to his best friend again, the man in his arms began to glow blue and lunged himself at Kotetsu, his fist connecting with Kotetsu's left eye. Lucky for him he still had less than a minute before his power ran out so it wouldn't really leave a mark.

But with less than a minute, Kotetsu had to think fast in order to neutralize the seething, obviously crazy man before him. The blonde man had clearly gone into a fit of rage, throwing uncoordinated punches and kicks at Kotetsu. With a few seconds to spare, Kotetsu managed to hit a pressure point on the man's neck when he ducked down. With a soft groan, he was passed out on the deck of the boat.

"Are you alright?" Antonio asked having recovered from the momentary shock. He was at Kotetsu's side, the man panting and staring at the unknown man on the deck of his ship. "Why couldn't I have just been normal? Was that a lot to ask for? Did my life really have to have excitement like this? God I'm getting old…" Kotetsu muttered out of breath and walked off to radio in what he'd found, leaving Antonio to deal with the man.

"Crusher of Justice here. Send an Ambulance to the Bay, there was a body in the crate we found, over." Kotetsu said as he started the boat up again. "Dead body? Over." The radio garbled. "No. Alive. A NEXT too. Almost beat the crap out of me. He passed out. I'll go with him to the hospital; you boys can look over the boat and the coffin he was in. Over."

There were a few seconds of silence.

"Coffin?"

"Coffin."


End file.
